On Sunday morning, April 13, in a clock shop in Conston, Klein Abraham sat at a workbench by the window. He picked up a gear with tweezers, dipped it into a small dish of cleaning solution, and carefully brushed the oily grime from between its teeth with a soft brush.
After a month of learning and working, he had acquired a basic grasp of many techniques. Apart from occasionally complaining that he worked too slowly, the shop owner rarely found fault with him anymore.
His temporary employer was a woman in her forties, a rarity in an era when mechanical work was almost entirely the domain of men. Nor was her expertise limited to repairing relatively simple wall and mantel clocks. She was equally adept at handling finely crafted pocket watches and maintaining the complex machinery inside clock towers.
After becoming her apprentice, Klein spent most of his days cleaning parts and recording customers' requests, occasionally trying his hand at dismantling and reassembling simple clocks. His wages were low, but he could watch the owner repair complex pocket watches from beside her workbench, learning things he would never have encountered in the internet age.
Through these lessons and his occasional chats with the owner, he discovered that this world's mechanical technology was not as backward as it appeared. Yet the most important driving force behind the Industrial Revolution-the steam engine-had never been invented.
This might be an opportunity... Klein reached that conclusion, but he was in no hurry to try it.
His main focus lay elsewhere for now. His first reason for becoming a clockmaker's apprentice was to secure a modest but steady income. His second was to maintain normal contact with the outside world, preventing prolonged isolation from making him withdrawn and out of touch.
Finally, it was also for the sake of "acting"...
Klein fitted the cleaned gear back inside the pocket watch and tightened the screws, following the steps he had learned over the past few weeks. After he wound the spring, the second hand, which had been still for so long, began moving again.
The owner took the pocket watch, held it to her ear, and listened. Then she checked it against the most accurate pendulum clock on the wall and nodded in satisfaction.
"Not bad. You still need to work on your speed, though."
At this acknowledgment, Klein suddenly felt an indescribable sense of comfort. It did not come entirely from the joy of successfully repairing the watch. It felt more as though the potion's power had responded to his actions.
The notes my parents left called this phenomenon "feedback," a sign of correctly grasping the Acting Method... Only by diligently learning something, acknowledging my shortcomings, and gradually mastering it under guidance can I fulfill the meaning of the title "Apprentice"? Klein pondered this silently, committing this experience and several similar sensations from before to memory.
As noon approached, the owner put away the tools on the workbench one by one, signaling the end of the day's work.
"You don't need to come in this afternoon. Remember to arrive early tomorrow. The clock tower sent over a set of old gears they removed. You can help me with them."
"Yes, Mrs. Harrington."
Klein took off his oil-stained apron and washed his hands. He was about to leave when the owner took a long loaf wrapped in an old cloth from beneath the counter and handed it to him.
"This was left over from breakfast. Take it home and eat it."
Klein paused, realizing that his deliberate show of financial hardship had led her to see him as a young man struggling to get by.
Actually, I only put on that act so you wouldn't turn down my job application... Klein sighed inwardly, accepted the bread, and thanked her. Only after leaving the shop did he look down at the old cloth wrapped around it.
In the usual scenes from stories back on Earth, a long loaf like this would be wrapped in newspaper... But although similar printed publications exist in this world, they aren't widespread, and they aren't cheap enough to casually use as food wrapping.
Maybe starting a newspaper could make me a media tycoon, but printing equipment, paper costs, and distribution channels are all beyond me. I've never learned anything about them... With this silent jab at himself, he headed home along the increasingly busy streets.
Passing a grocery shop, Klein bought some salted meat and potatoes, planning to make a hearty soup with both meat and vegetables when he got back. Then he crossed two streets in a seemingly casual manner, only to turn into an alley piled with wooden crates as he passed an intersection.
He quickly glanced back to confirm that no one was following him, then pressed his hand against a brick wall. As though losing his physical substance, he merged into the solid masonry, passed through the neighboring building in an instant, and emerged from a corner on another street.
He did not stop there. He changed direction twice more and passed through a dead end before reaching an ordinary-looking building. He went up to the second floor, took out his key, and unlocked the door.
This was not the apartment where he openly lived, but a safe house he had rented in advance, several streets away from his actual residence. He now alternated between the two at irregular intervals, keeping clothes and necessities in both. Even if someone found one of them, he would not immediately lose every means of escape.
I didn't spot anyone following me, yet I still took such a long detour. I'm practically an elite secret agent... Klein grumbled inwardly. After closing the door, he first checked the windows and several tiny marks he had left around the room. Only once he was certain no one had broken in did he set the cloth bag of food on the table.
This caution was not without reason. The notes left by the original owner's parents repeatedly mentioned that the Abraham Family bore some kind of long-standing curse. Its members not only frequently died in accidents or lost control, but also tended to attract the attention of unidentified Beyonders.
For this reason, members of the different branches had voluntarily broken off contact and scattered across various cities to live in seclusion, preventing a single disaster from wiping out the entire family.
A curse...
At the thought of that word, Klein walked to the window and looked up at the sunlit sky.
The moon, difficult to see during the day-and especially the full moon-was one of the things the Abraham Family had to guard against most carefully.
A month after the original Klein had consumed the potion, lost control, and died, leaving Zhou Mingrui to cross over and inherit his body and his Apprentice powers, this world had welcomed another full moon. He, too, had heard those strange ravings.
The sounds seemed to emerge directly in the depths of his mind, overlapping in incomprehensible layers. They sent his spirituality surging beyond his control, while his thoughts gradually descended into chaos. At that moment, he finally understood the danger of the "moon" described in his parents' notes.
Fortunately, Klein had not simply waited for death that night.
The moment he realized something was wrong with his condition, he used the four black dots left on the back of his hand after his first Luck Enhancement Ritual. He took four steps counterclockwise and recited the four incantations from Earth, allowing his spirit body to enter the mysterious Gray Fog Space.
The instant he appeared in the palace he had created for the Fool, the maddening ravings were cut off. Only a few distant, indistinct cries remained, and before Klein could make out their meaning, they faded completely.
This meant that the Abraham Family's curse most likely had another source. The moon itself was not what brought the madness. To uncover the truth, he would need both to continue studying the gray fog and to obtain more information from other members of the Abraham Family.
And perhaps, as someone who could resist the ravings and the curse, he was this family's last hope...
At this thought, Klein lowered his gaze from the sky. He made soup with the salted meat and potatoes, ate his fill with the free bread, and then spent the time after his meal cleaning. Only when everything was finished did he take the secondhand pocket watch the owner had temporarily lent him from his pocket, flip open its cover, and check the time.
That afternoon, he planned to formally meet members of another Abraham branch. He had chosen a location near a church of the Church of the Evernight Goddess. If anything went wrong, he would rush straight inside to seek help.
He suspected that those large churches probably had official Beyonders stationed inside. He had done nothing wrong, so even if barging in led to questioning or detention, it would at least be safer than falling into the hands of unidentified Beyonders.
But first, the gathering above the gray fog was about to begin.
Klein checked the lock again, drew the curtains, and walked to the center of the room. In a low voice, he recited in sequence:
"Immortal Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings.
"Sky Lord of Heaven and Earth for Blessings.
"Exalted God of Heaven and Earth for Blessings.
"Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings."
With each line he spoke in Chinese, he took one step counterclockwise. As the final line left his lips, his body grew light, and his spirit body floated upward, passing through the pervasive gray fog into an ancient palace.
Massive pillars supported a lofty dome. The Bronze Long Table and the High-backed Chairs remained just as they had been at the end of the previous gathering.
Many crimson stars floated deep within the endless gray fog surrounding him. Three shared a subtle connection with him. His earlier tests had shown that by touching them deliberately, he could draw the corresponding people's spirit bodies into this space. The other stars seemed distant and dormant, and no matter what he tried, he could not truly establish a connection with them.
But today, Klein noticed that a previously quiet star in the distance was flickering, brightening and dimming just like the one belonging to the last new member.
Another new member? Has someone else touched an ancient mirror from Solomon's era or a candlestick from Tudor's era and established a connection with this gray fog? Klein wondered, carefully reaching out to touch it from afar.
But the star merely trembled slightly before falling still. Klein, meanwhile, felt his own spirituality become somewhat unstable. It resembled the onset of the spiritual exhaustion he had experienced after speaking with the other two people during his first visit above the gray fog. Without hesitation, he immediately severed his connection with the star.
Either the other person's spirituality is far stronger than mine, or maintaining three outside members at once is already close to the limit of my Sequence 9 abilities? Klein rubbed his temple. Unable to determine the answer for now, he simply memorized the anomalous star's position.
After resting for a moment, he once again copied the false hooded figure to the head of the long table. Once he had confirmed that the words recorded in advance could still be reproduced normally, he sat in his usual seat and reached out to touch the three stars most closely connected to him.
Beams of crimson light rose from the gray fog, appearing in three High-backed Chairs beside the Bronze Long Table.
Meanwhile, in a workroom beside the High Court in the Bols District of Suhit City, Morvan Durand sat behind his desk, writing furiously.
Suddenly, he stopped writing and looked toward the shelf beside him, which held various tools and several antiques. His gaze settled on the Inverted Candlestick from the Fourth Epoch's Tudor Dynasty.
He then rose, approached the shelf, and reached out to grasp the candlestick's cold frame.
"Hm?"
Morvan narrowed his gray-blue eyes slightly, glanced from side to side, and leaned closer to examine the candlestick.
A moment later, he set the candlestick firmly back in place and murmured with a frown:
"Could the Blood Emperor really have left behind some kind of power?"
After standing there in thought for a while, he shook his head, returned to his desk, and picked up his quill to continue writing:
"...In this life, following plans made long before, he became a scholar and entered university to study subjects that had interested him in his previous life, but which he had never had the chance to explore.
"There, he met a woman whom he loved deeply, and who loved him just as much. They started a family and had a bright, adorable daughter. It was as though the curse that had followed him through so many lives was finally willing to let him go.
"But misfortune soon struck again. His beloved and his daughter died one after the other, and no investigation yielded any answers.
"Only after some of his memories returned did he discover that all of this was connected to the ancient, mysterious Fourth Epoch, and to a curse that had endured to the present day..."